Until recently, antenna towers have typically employed RF coaxial cables for power and/or signal communications. Such cables are often mounted to the tower via cable hangers, which capture the cable and mount it to the tower. One popular variety of cable hanger is a “stackable” hanger, which has the capacity to mount via snap latches to another hanger, thereby enabling multiple cables to be mounted in a “stack”; an exemplary stackable hanger is the EZS hanger, available from Andrew, Inc. (Joliet, Ill.). Snap-in hangers are often desirable due to their ease of use, although cable hangers that are not stackable are often employed also.
Operators have begun to replace traditional RF cables on towers with fiber optic and/or hybrid fiber/power cables. These new cables (especially the hybrid styles) can have a slightly irregular shape; exemplary irregular shapes (e.g., oval, elliptical, egg-shaped, kidney and non-descript irregular) are shown in FIGS. 11A-11E. Also, fiber optic and hybrid fiber/power cables are typically heavy (in some instances three to four times the weight per unit length of traditional RF cable). In addition to being of a slightly irregular shape, the diameter over jacket (DOJ) of a cable can be vastly different from traditional RF cables.
As a result, in practice some operators use standard hangers in combination with grommets to hang fiber or hybrid fiber cable. The grommets are a fairly soft polymer (EPDM, nylon, or the like). The outer diameter of the grommet mimics the RF cable size in order to fit in the hanger, whereas the inner diameter is configured to grip the fiber/hybrid fiber cable. In some grommets, multiple holes are included to accommodate multiple cables (fiber, power, signal, etc.). However, the grommets may be sized poorly for the cables they receive and/or may slip from the hanger. As such, modifications to improve the holding of cables via such grommets may be desirable.